


Calculating the Odds

by applecameron



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Eames POV, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 22:10:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14435157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applecameron/pseuds/applecameron





	Calculating the Odds

There aren't many things that irk Eames, but high among them rank people who treat Arthur like he really is a robot. No wonder he only barely tolerates Dom. It's not jealousy, that Arthur chose to run after him rather than stay with Eames, that's the kind of loyal man he is. He could not be true to Eames were he false to his great mentor. 

Arthur is disciplined, focused, exacting, thorough, tireless in pursuit of his goals, which are the survival of every person involved in a dreamshare job first and the extraction of the desired information second, though, the latter informs the former quite significantly. Arthur can spend months just on prep, and the less time he gets to spend on that prep, the more likely the job is to be a disaster. 

Eames has worked on jobs with no point at all, back when there were maybe 2 PASIVs in private hands, and the best he can say is that he survived those experiences with minimal scarring. 

Which is why, the first question Eames asks when he gets the warning that Dom is coming to Mombasa to recruit him, is, “how long has this job been in the works?” 

Arthur tells him and he winces. Then starts researching Proclus, Saito, and Fischer-Morrow. 

It takes 3 days before Dom arrives, and during those three days Eames concludes they are lucky that the man now holding the whip hand over Arthur's life is a man steeped in Japanese business culture and its evolutionary ancestors: accustomed to long-term strategic planning and the application of Confucian principles of loyalty, reciprocity, and achieving balance between self-interest and altruism in the business context. These factors make it far more likely all of them will be allowed to live, though, probably never allowed to fully leave Saito's orbit. But loyalty, discipline, and discretion, being Arthur's watchwords, mean that of everyone involved in this madness, he is the one Saito will come to value the most and keep alive. Satisfactory. 

Eames, meanwhile, will play not quite dim, exactly, but rather simply self-interested and therefore controllable by Arthur's skilled hand. Easy to comprehend, to a man like Saito. A known quantity, or, a knowable one, rather than a risk to be eliminated. 

He's played worse hands and won the table.


End file.
